Unlike most other shorebirds, phalaropes have lobed toes enabling them to be excellent swimmers. This
Wilson's Phalarope, like his two relatives
Red and
Red-necked, feeds by swimming in small, rapid circles. The resulting whirlpool stirs food up from the bottom of shallow water bodies. Their diet consists primarily of aquatic insects and small crustaceans. Brine shrimp and brine flies is their diet on saline lakes. Also unique to this unusual bird is that the males take on the role of incubating the eggs and raising the young while the female attempts to find another male with which to mate.
This long distance migrant winters from northern Peru to Uruguay, Patagonian lowlands and Tierra del Fuego. They breed in the prairies of North America in western Canada and the western U.S.
According to the
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the Wilson's Phalarope is classified as "
Least Concern".
Their scientific name,
Phalaropus tricolor, means "coot" "foot" and three color. The common name is after Scottish-American ornithologist
Alexander Wilson.
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